LOS GATOS: Netflix’s India operations has helped them redouble their efforts on improving the delivery of their video content worldwide, a top company executive told ETtech.

“We’ve been working on the efficiency of delivery and the data that we had about the performance of streaming in India made us redouble our efforts to use new codecs, denser encodes” said Neil Hunt, chief product officer, Netflix.

“This is more important in India because of the bandwidth constraints but the technology is equally relevant in the US or markets with best streaming performance like Korea.” Hunt said.

The US-based video streaming service which recently crossed the 100 million subscribers mark, is now working on a system that streams videos at very low Internet speeds while retaining almost the same image quality for viewers.

This system is a result of collaboration with University of Southern California, University of Texas at Austin and the University of Nantes and is expected to be rolled out by the end of this year.

Anne Aaron, Chief Director of video algorithms at Netf lix, said this system will be crucial for emerging markets like India where people watch Netf lix content more frequently on mobile phones than on televisions and have limited data caps. India is currently among the company’s three largest mobile phone markets across the world.

Netflix has also started setting up its own content delivery network (CDN) servers, called Open Connect servers across India to improve the delivery of of its videos. “We design the hardware and the software that runs on these servers and then we connect them directly to the ISP network” said Ken Florance, VP Content delivery, Netflix.

“We don’t charge anybody for the servers. So if you’re an ISP and you want an open connect server or a dozen of them or 100 of them in your network, we give them to you for free because it’s a real benefit to us.” said Florance.

Netflix is also extensively focusing on content personalization for consumers based on their tastes. It recently introduced a personalized percentage match score that shows how likely the user will like the show by analyzing their individual viewing habits and behavior.

The service also replaced its five star rating system to a more simpler thumbs up/down rating system. “The most important work we do is around personalisation.

If you take 50 people in US or 50 people in India, their tastes are hugely varied. So the value of personalization is that the consumer can get a great experience where the hundreds and the thousands of titles that we’re producing gets filtered down and prioritized, so you get to focus on the titles that you want” said Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings.

Several people ET spoke with about Ericsson’s India operations, including its current and former employees, said the Stockholm-based firm has reduced headcount in the last one year or so across functions, in line with its global restructuring.